Balance the Budget

Today’s NY Times has an interactive feature that allows you to attempt to balance the federal budget.

I save $465,000,000,000 for 2015 but still came up short for 2030.  29% of my savings were in “tax increases” and 71% in spending cuts.  I wouldn’t say that this is a particularly accurate model given the limited choices available, for example there aren’t any real choices for Social Security reform other that raising the eligibility age and using an alternate means for calculating inflation, but it was fun to try.

Speaking of social security – I was thinking that a good reform would be to divert 5% of an employees payroll taxes into a diversified portfolio (like a 401K basically but all participants would be on the same plan) this amount would increase say 2% per year over the next 47 years.  This would allow the current beneficiaries to continue with their benefits and move the system into a plan that gave better returns than the current one.  It’s a far from perfect solution but one that might be politically possible.